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| Social Platform For Doodles Pushes Bounds of Web Creativity | |  The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Doodle.ly Quick Pitch: Doodle.ly is a creative social platform for doodlers. Hand-drawn masterpieces created on Doodle.ly can be shared to social networks. Genius Idea: Doodle.ly artists can draw straight on the website or sketch using the Doodle.ly iPad app. For Doodle.ly co-creators Evan Vogel and Darren Paul, the social platform they dreamed up and launched in July 2011 -- is the place for innovation, creativity and inspiration on the web. The latest user-submitted drawings include doodles of bright flowers, dinosaurs and detailed sketches paying homage to Beastie Boys Rapper MCA, who died last Friday. The current number of doodles on the site stands at 32,000 -- and counting. Doodle.ly is a web application and iPad app that lets users draw whatever they want and effortlessly share creations to the web. It takes under a minute for someone with a Twitter and Facebook to sign into Doodle.ly as a new user. That's when the magic happens. There are different pen tools and colors, all free to use, so the boundaries are endless. Once the drawing, sketch or scribble is complete, doodles are shared on Twitter or Facebook automatically. The Doodle.ly team is working on building untethered account log-ins -- to stop forced sharing. But for now, the world gets to experience all doodles created on Doodle.ly. Vogel and Paul say they see most of the doodles that come through. These startup guys have high standards for their "highly skilled" userbase. "We want to see the next Radiohead album or Time magazine cover created by doodlers," Vogel told Mashable. An application update released on Tuesday is intended to make the social platform more interactive. New features include a "like button" on every doodle. Plus, a resulting "popular section" for trending images. These social features were inspired by Instagram's internal system of "likes" and comments for the app's filtered square images. There's instant gratification in "likes," Paul says. "This is really meant to be fun," Paul says. "The new features we are launching are socialization features. What the 'like' button does is take the app to the next level. You can like the doodle either by clicking the 'like' button or by double tapping the doodle. This allows the cream to rise to the top." The social platform is meant to be playful and positive. The hand-drawn aspect of this medium is special, says the creators. "We can see people around the world using this as a way to share a love note to a loved one, wish someone condolences or just to doodle a creative idea," Paul says. Marketing teams are taking advantage of Doodle.ly's simple drawing interface and sharing aspects. NHL team, the New Jersey Devils, recently used Doodle.ly on Fan Appreciation Night as a crowd-sourcing device. Hockey fans were asked to sketch a team-inspired doodle to feature on 17,000 Rally Rags for the first home game of the playoffs. After 10,000 votes were cast, the fan-submitted doodle was announced. The Doodle.ly team says the social platform of doodles is opening up new avenues of marketing and reaching consumers. The team, however, says they are currently not focused on monetization or partnerships. For now, the team is busy beefing up its product and working on releasing its API. Projects they have seen come out of their privately released API include a tool for collaborative doodles and a screen saver app. "We really want this to be a worldwide platform that is ubiquitous and can live out potential we believe it has," Paul said. Are you a fan of web-based doodling? Tell us in the comments if this is a social platform you would use. Images courtesy of Doodle.ly Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. |
| Pirates Off Silicon Valley! 133 Startups to Live on This Rogue Boat [PICS] | | Monday, May 07, 2012 9:31 PM | Chris Taylor |
|  If you float it, they will come. That's the lesson of Blueseed, a brave new utopia for startups that will be anchored in international waters, 12 miles off the coast of the San Francisco peninsula -- aka Silicon Valley -- sometime in the second half of 2013. The company calls its floating campus the "Googleplex of the sea." Blueseed is funded by Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook. Famous for his libertarian views, Thiel is eager to create more havens for startups that are free from all government regulation -- indeed, from all laws. (To that end, he has also pledged $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute.) As laughable as it may sound to some, startups are flocking to fulfill Thiel's vision. Blueseed has released the details of a survey on its website, which shows 133 international startups willing and eager to get on board. A plurality are from the US, but there's also a lot of interest from India, Australia, Canada, Europe and practically every other area of the world: What's the draw? Well, partly, it's the fact that no U.S. passport or visa would be required to live and work on board the vessel. (If Blueseed is successful, this could be one way around the dearth of H1-B visas for engineers, something which is much lamented in the tech world.) Mostly, according to Blueseed's survey, it's the proximity to Silicon Valley, less than half an hour away by helicopter or somewhat more by shuttle boat and bus. But we wonder if the startup founders have been also tempted by the Googleplex-like array of amenities promised: high-speed wifi across the ship, 24-hour cafes, a full-service gym, concierge, medical services and (strangely enough for a libertarian venture) a post office. Blueseed is still very much in the concept stage. Check out the pictures below for renderings of various designs the company is considering, and let us know in the comments: would you live and work here? |
| 4 Tips For Gamifying Your Marketing Plan | | Monday, May 07, 2012 7:07 PM | Darren Steele |
|  Darren Steele is the strategic director of Mindspace, and co-author of the gamification book, "I'll Eat this Cricket for a Cricket Badge." Darren can be reached at darren@mindspace.net. The hype around gamification is fairly new, but the idea has been around for some time. In fact, badges and leader boards could be considered the new sweepstakes and loyalty rewards. And gamification is not just for major consumer brands and their tech-savvy 18-to-34-year-old demographic. There are examples where gamification in marketing has worked spectacularly for 50-year-old rural ranchers. In other words, any audience is up for grabs. SEE ALSO: Why Gamification Can't Be Stopped That said, marketers can't just add a Groupon-style approach to something and think it's gamified. If you're thinking about giving gamification a test run, here are four steps to help you get it right with your next marketing campaign. 1. Decide on the Right Opacity Do you want this to actually feel like a game for your customers or do you want game mechanics buried deep enough that your target may not realize why the experience is so compelling? Many game mechanics are those hidden hooks in video games that tap into psychological triggers that drive behavior. You can apply these same hooks to a marketing campaign for any audience, whether they are into traditional video games or not. If you're still scratching your head, or if you work for an organization that doesn't do change well, consider trying gamification lite. This might mean starting with an actual branded game on your Facebook page. You'll eventually want to graduate from simple games with badges as prizes to something deeper, but it's a good way to start measuring the effectiveness of gamification on your audience. You can then show proof of concept to anyone at your company who's on the fence. Most web development companies now are able to create simple gaming apps for social media, and this can be a relatively low-cost campaign. Just set your expectations accordingly. 2. Break Up Information Into Smaller Pieces The way complex games draw you into an experience without a 50-page manual is by giving you the minimal amount of information you need to proceed to the next clear step. Marketers could apply this to their over-done emails or portal-heavy websites by giving consumers only a bite-sized amount of information. This is the gaming mechanic known as cascading information theory. One place to test this is YouTube. YouTube stats don't lie. Once your video crosses the sixty-second mark, drop off is significant. Try taking the last video you created and editing it into smaller pieces. Then distribute those sections through your normal channels, and measure. Did viewers drop off before it finished? When? Did they move on to the next video? At what rate? You can also apply this to blog posts; break up one long blog into a four-part series with a call to action or reward at the bottom of each one. The beauty of this mechanic is that it's very easy to measure, and because you're dealing with smaller pieces of information, you can tweak often and easily. 3. Do Something With Likes and Followers Social media hit like a tidal wave a few years back and left virtually every business trying to quickly figure out how to leverage new tools before getting left behind. Now that the hype has subsided, brands are saying, "I accomplished my goal of 100,000 Facebook likes. Now what?" When applying gamification to social media, marketers shouldn't limit themselves to badges and leader boards (at least not after they've tried it and see minor success). At more sophisticated levels of gamification you can actually use social channels as the starting point to realize certain desired behaviors from consumers. This might include opting into email or making a purchase. As a starting point, experiment with a creative dashboard that rewards desired social and purchase behaviors. This can be a more transparent way to interact with your target and provide them with recognition, the satisfaction of accomplishment, and a fun form of feedback. Again, this doesn't have to be expensive or take a long time to implement, and it's a great way to start taking social followers and getting them into your funnel. 4. Match Incentives With Engagement Games and research into human psychology have taught us that people are happier when they earn something, rather than when it is given to them. Instead of giving your customers rewards, make them earn them. The more they engage, the bigger the rewards. For instance, watching a one-minute video earns them a 5% discount you might have given away without requiring any action. Following the call to action at the end of the video earns them a 10% discount. If you combine these rewards with the creative dashboard example above, you have introduced a meta-game. A meta-game is an umbrella that ties mini-games or game mechanics together. So instead of exchanging a white paper for an email address in isolation, consider asking for three behaviors, having three rewards, and measuring them all in a dashboard featured prominently on the site. This also works beautifully with customer retention and loyalty campaigns. As your gamification gets more sophisticated, you can introduce economies, where your target earns points, coins, or some other currency by performing desired behaviors. Then let them use that currency to unlock a variety of rewards. A note before you jump into the proverbial gamification waters: Get past the common myths and know what success will look like for your company. Gamification isn't just video games with your logo in the corner, and it isn't just for people who play games. Like any good marketing effort, define behaviors you want to see from customers, and the measurable end result. Happy playing! |
| 35 Million Users Later, Twitpic Launches its First App | | Monday, May 07, 2012 6:34 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  Twitpic, a service that puts photos on Twitter before Twitter itself let you do that, launched its first mobile app on Monday. The free iPhone app lets users edit photos and add filters before posting them to Twitter. Twitpic founder Noah Everett says that a similar Android app will be released within the next month. Founded in 2008, Twitpic provides the API that powers photo sharing in apps like Tweetbot. Twitter launched its own photo-sharing service last year with Photobucket as its hosting partner, but sharing via Twitpic is still an option in its mobile apps. Even though Twitter's native service has unsurprisingly eclipsed Twitpic, Everett says the app has more than 35 million users on third-party devices. Photo-sharing app Instagram, which was recently acquired by Facebook, has about 50 million users. So why is Twitpic launching its own app now? Everett says it's not to make his company a better acquisition target for Twitter, which reportedly wanted to buy Instagram before Facebook made its $1 billion deal. "Our goal is just to provide the best possible product for our users," he says. "As far as trying to position ourselves for acquisition by any particular service, that's not our focus." Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, vesilvio?. |
| Meet the 19-Year-Old Pinterest Veteran Who Just Got $7 Million Funding | | Monday, May 07, 2012 5:41 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Sahil Lavingia is a great believer in learning by doing. He quit college after a semester, reasoning that he "could save three and a half years of my time" by leaving to pursue his goal of working for a real company. That company turned out to be Pinterest, the social media juggernaut that got 104 million visits in March, according to Experian Hitwise, making it arguably the world's number three social network. Lavingia left before Pinterest really took off, but he says he doesn't regret it. After all, he really wanted to be CEO, and the only way to do that was to start his own company. "I'm really happy," he tells Mashable. "Building a company is better than working for someone else." Lavingia's new company is Gumroad, a startup that aims to do for online payments what Twitter did for blogging -- provide a common means of distribution. Gumroad's twist is that it connects prospective buyers and sellers across social media networks. As the video below explains, if you sign up for Gumroad, you can easily sell your stuff to people who follow you on Twitter or to your Facebook friends via a Gumroad link. Seth Goldstein, the chairman of Turntable.fm calls it a "PayPal for the social web." The idea's not unprecedented. You can do the same thing via eBay, of course, but Gumroad "is a lot faster, simpler, and cheaper," Lavingia says. The company takes a 5% cut of sales plus .25 compared to eBay's 9% plus insertion fees (which run from .10 to $2.) Five percent is also way less than Amazon's 50% cut and iTunes's 30% cut. A few investors think Lavingia is onto something. SV Angel, Accel Partners and Lowercase Capital gave Gumroad $1.1 million in funding late last year. On Monday, the company announced it got another $7 million round led Mike Abbott, former Twitter engineering head and partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Not bad for a guy who just started coding four years ago, when he was 15. "I started designing five or six years ago, but got bored making pretty pictures," says Lavingia. The teen fell in love with iOS and eventually caught the attention Goldstein, who commissioned Lavingia to create the company's iPhone app. "He's a great coder, thoughtful, strategic," says Goldstein. "I tried to hire him, but he wanted to start his own company." Now a teen CEO, Lavingia is following in the footsteps of Mark Zuckerberg, who persuaded venture capitalists to invest in Facebook when he was 20, David Karp, who launched Tumblr at 20, and Brian Wong, who became CEO of Kiip at 19. The latter may have been the youngest person to ever receive money from a venture capital firm, according to reports at the time. Lavingia may not have broken the record, but he's done something else: Taken himself up on a dare to run his own company. Says Lavingia: "I wanted to see if I could do it. This was the best way to find out." |
| Flip Flops for Good: Kickstarter Company Wants You to Design a Pair | | Monday, May 07, 2012 5:10 PM | Zoe Fox |
|  Vancouver startup FlyingFlips wants to build a community of socially conscious graphic designers. The ecommerce platform lets shoppers vote for their favorite sandal designs, which they'd like to see become available for retail. The most-popular options will be manufactured and the artists will receive a portion of the sale proceeds. "We're trying to build a really good social network of graphic designers," FlyingFlips designer co-founder Trevor Broad told Mashable. "We call it open source flip flops." The site, which is hoping to receive funding from Kickstarter, says its flip flops are eco-friendly, made from 20% to 30% recycled materials, and lets you trade in used pairs. SEE ALSO: Roozt Is the Etsy for Social Entrepreneurs Once designers have submitted designs to the FlyingFlips community, the startup encourages them to share their submissions with their social networks to vote. For each purchase made, FlyingFlips donates one pair of flip flops to a person in need in the developing world, through Soles4Souls and Fundacion A. Jean Brugger. The Kickstarter campaign, which runs until the end of May, will fund the first run of flip flops and the creation of the online store. The store will launch one week into June, right after the Kickstarter ends. FlyingFlips hopes to make eight pairs available by June -- the two pairs advertised as Kickstarter rewards, five pairs crowd sourced by designers and one blank pair. Though the team was initially split on creating blank flip flops, lacking a crowdsourced design, they ultimately decided more people could join the buy one give one movement, if they offered a blank slate option. Would you buy a pair of FlyingFlips? Let us know if you would back this project. Bonus: Crazy Kickstarter Projects |
| 4 Ways Your Business Can Avoid Being a Menace on Twitter | | Monday, May 07, 2012 3:10 PM | Curt Finch |
|  Curt Finch is the founder and CEO of Journyx, a company that offers time-tracking and resource management software. Connect with him and Journyx on Facebook and Twitter. Highbeam Research just updated its quarterly social media index, and according to the latest data, Twitter received 55.17% of total media attention in the first quarter of 2012, widening the gap between second-placed Facebook, which fell to 41.18%. LinkedIn also dipped, registering just 2.23% overall. Naturally, every business wants a piece of the action on Twitter, but on a platform with that many eyeballs, every business better have a strategy first. From a company perspective, this initially makes sense. A business envisions Twitter as yet another marketing platform from which it can blast forth corporate messaging, advertisements and, occasionally, customer support. Unfortunately, many fail to realize that Twitter is not, at its core, a business tool. While a company may feel it is being innovative by reaching out to a new audience on Twitter, that same audience often feels that the business's tweets are spammy, phony and even creepy. The alternative is not to keep businesses off of Twitter, as there is a lot of good that comes from engagement on this platform. Instead it's important to show off your company and brand in a way that paints both in a positive light, making followers eager for that next tweet. To do that, here are four faux pas that companies should avoid, and some basic tips for crafting an approach that appeals to fans. 1. Think Quality Over Quantity A business pursues leads on Twitter because it thinks prospects are more likely to engage with them on this platform. So why do businesses think it's acceptable to tweet every five minutes about their products, services and new releases? Twitter has a 140-character limit for a reason. Rather, publish engaging snippets that will spark a conversation. Have you seen the people who take the alternative approach and post a flurry of tweets in a short time to get "exposure?" They get exposure, but not the kind they want. Guess what happens next? Unfollow. Phil Rampulla, founder of The Materials Group, believes that "brands need to resist the urge to be a fire hose of content." On Twitter, the quality of the content carries much more weight than the quantity. Remember, if you are just pushing for sales, you're limiting your exposure and hurting your brand. If you are posting something valuable and interesting, it will get retweeted and reach a wider audience. 2. Be Clear About Who You Are One of the coolest things about Twitter, and about social media in general, is that it lets you have a real conversation with people who might not otherwise be able to reach you. However, when followers don't know who you are, it can be difficult to find common ground. A basic concept that a surprising number of businesses miss is to include the proper amount of information on their Twitter profiles. "Many companies forget about a customer's first impression when they stumble upon a business Twitter page. Company Twitterand backgrounds should contain detailed information on the business and what the business actually does," says Nicole Minadeo, senior account executive at Resolute Consulting. But that's not all. Twitter bios and profiles should also contain information such as the community manager's name. If your company has a high-profile and social media-savvy CEO, it is not unreasonable for that person to handle tweets. Of course, this might not be feasible. In that case, there is nothing wrong with putting a face to a name and giving your social media specialist some room on the company Twitter page. When it comes down to it, fans like to know they are talking to a real person, not a robot. 3. Don't Play Robot Stalker Have you gotten those annoying robotic messages? They come in the form of scheduled tweets with generic information or auto tweets with useless messages. These can turn off fans and discredit your social media efforts extremely quickly. If you are not going to personally respond to a follower who messages you, then don't bother with an automated reply. It will ultimately lead that follower to believe he's dealing with a system instead of a real person, and he probably won't try contacting you again. 4. Definitely Be Useful Sometimes, keeping an eye on users and targeting responses can be effective, but only if the information you send is useful. "For instance, I tweeted that I had not seen the movie Bridesmaids," says Leslie Richin, social media strategist for Low Maintenance PR. "@TiVo responded that Bridesmaids was appearing on HBO, and cc'ed me in the tweet. Because of that, I did in fact watch Bridesmaids that night!" Just remember, people will be put off by any kind of targeted messaging that seems inauthentic. As you craft your company's Twitter strategy, keep in mind that people want to talk to people on Twitter. Keep it fun, keep it interesting, and above all, keep it real. Your followers will thank you for it. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sodafish |
| Pebble Watch: The Pre-Kickstarter Years | | Monday, May 07, 2012 2:14 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  When the Pebble Watch raised $1 million on Kickstarter in just 28 hours, it looked like an overnight success. But Pebble's creator, Eric Migicovsky, has actually been working on smart watches for the last four years. Migicovsky first began tinkering with watches that display information from phones when he was a student at the University of Waterloo. He built his first prototype of the idea in his Netherlands dorm room, while studying abroad. "Watches were just the first thing that appealed to me," he says of his initial inclination toward the product. After graduation in 2009, he and a small team started working on the watch full-time. Their first product, InPulse, only worked with BlackBerry. "We sold about 1,500 and earned $200,000 in revenue -- which, up until three weeks ago, we thought was an awesome amount," he says. While InPulse got a modicum of attention from Mashable, alongside The New York TImes and Wired, it did not see the kind of sales that tempt big investors. After graduating from startup accelerator Y-Combinator in April and changing its name to Pebble Technology, the startup had raised about $375,000 in angel financing but was struggling to raise a larger sum. As an alternative to fundraising for its new product, Pebble, the company spent a month working on a Kickstarter video. Unlike InPulse, Pebble works with both Android devices and iPhones. A range of watch-face options turn it into an analog, digital or sports watch at will, and developers will soon be able to build apps that display information on the connected watch's e-paper screen. In their Kickstarter video, the team focused on how the watch could be used in daily life to, for instance, view text messages and incoming phone calls without actually picking up the phone -- a feature that is especially useful during activities like running or biking. More than 55,000 Kickstarter users have committed to funding the project. With two weeks in the campaign to go, they've already contributed $8 million to the Pebble Watch. Migicovsky had set his Kickstarter goal at a humble $100,000. "Our plan was to make a thousand watches," he says. "We really just wanted to make a thousand watches. But we're happy making more, that's pretty cool." |
| Only 49% of Marketers Have Integrated Social Into Brand Building [STUDY] | | Monday, May 07, 2012 2:03 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Despite all of the hoopla about social media, only 49% of marketers said it is fully integrated into their brand-building strategy, according to a new survey. The report by Forrester Research is based on a survey of 99 CMOs and marketing VPs in February. The research reveals that such marketers are overwhelmingly aware that social is important -- 92% agree that social media has "fundamentally changed how consumers engage with brands." Yet a little more than half say it is still siloed from the rest of their marketing plans. Tracy Stokes, a principal analyst at Forrester and the author of the report, says marketers are just now "stepping back to see how the jigsaw fits into their marketing plan." Stokes, however, was encouraged that marketers are accepting the importance of social. "What surprised me was how marketing leaders had embraced the idea," she says. "There was no gray." Elsewhere in the report, Forrester reports that 59% of of online consumers are active on social media sites weekly and one-third have become a fan of a brand on Facebook or Twitter. Marketers, realizing the importance of social media, say the impact of social on their brand is second only to search. However, about half of business-to-consumer marketers agreed with the statement "Social media has the potential to build my brand, but I'm not sure how to capitalize on it." Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ilbusca |
| 8 Ways to Get the Biggest Marketing Bang Out of SlideShare | | Monday, May 07, 2012 1:49 PM | Joe Chernov |
|  Joe Chernov is the vice president of content marketing for Eloqua. He is responsible for creating, distributing, and measuring content that increases awareness and drives demand. Follow him @jchernov. Salesforce.com's Jennifer Burnham calls it, "a library in the cloud." JESS3 co-founder, Jesse Thomas describes it as, "Wikipedia mixed with Delicious and Vimeo." However you want to characterize SlideShare, remember this: It's big. More than nine million uploads big. Twenty-nine million monthly unique visitors big. And, according to LinkedIn, $119 million big. Yet, despite its sharp growth and high-profile acquisition, many marketers are unsure of what to do on SlideShare beyond uploading PowerPoints. The social platform is much more than the Web's largest archive of presentations, PDFs, and videos. It's also a vibrant, mobile-friendly, Google-indexed community frequented by reporters, buyers, and senior executives. Here are eight ways savvy social marketers can take advantage of that. 1. An SEO End-Around SEO is one of the biggest cost centers in marketing, and with good reason. Studies show that Google users click page-one results 88% more often than page-two results. But in SlideShare's case, search engines index "notes" text, which means popular, keyword-optimized presentations often rise to the top of results pages. Edelman's EVP, David Armano, refers to this as, "a great way to own a thought." 2. A Surprising Source of Referral Traffic While SlideShare may not rival Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in referral traffic, it's clearly the thickest segment of the SEO tail. For example, SlideShare refers more traffic to our company than Google+ and YouTube, combined. Jay Baer, co-author of The NOW Revolution reminds clients, "No matter how many visitors your website has, SlideShare has a lot more." 3. A Bridge to Press and Bloggers People tend to trust content they discover organically more than they do content hosted on a corporate homepage. Todd Wheatland, head of global marketing at Kelly Services, believes journalists are more willing to embed a SlideShare file because they perceive it as a "neutral platform." Salesforce.com's Burnham adds, "SlideShare works great as embedded media in a promoted Tweet on your branded Twitter page." This is part of why she equips company bloggers with SlideShare embeds. 4. A Hub for Leads Unlike many social channels, the impact of SlideShare can be tracked all the way into the proverbial "sales funnel." Premium users can insert forms into their presentations, allowing them to know exactly who downloaded a file. Andrea Soltysiak, director of global marketing at Ariba, integrated SlideShare into her marketing automation and CRM systems, which allowed her to capture new sales leads and automatically route them to the sales department. Ariba generated more than 1,000 leads in three weeks of experimenting with this solution. 5. Great Social Integration Even before LinkedIn bought SlideShare, the two played together nicely. The LinkedIn SlideShare plug-in allows every employee with a LinkedIn profile to become a distribution channel for the company's content. Richard Margetic, Dell's director of global social media, recommends connecting the two networks. This is because the more one's LinkedIn audience talks about a presentation the more likely SlideShare is to feature it on the site's front page, which causes views to skyrocket. Brain Traffic CEO, Kristina Halvorson's recent A Content Strategy Roadmap presentation surged from about 200 views to 125,000 when SlideShare's editorial team featured it on the site's homepage. 6. The "Everywhere" USB Drive SlideShare is the hiding-in-plain-sight solution for public speakers. Rather than fuss with large file transfers, simply run the deck from SlideShare. Margetic puts a shortened URL on the first slide of his presentations, a simple tactic that's resulted in an a significant increase in views and downloads after the live event. 7. A Supportive Community Creatives applaud the SlideShare community's support of fellow designers and brand marketers. Designer Jesse Desjardins has used SlideShare to "crowd fund" trips to Cannes and South by Southwest. Agency newcomer JESS3 leveraged its provocative Agency of the Future presentation to spark dialogue with big Madison Avenue firms. According to Leslie Bradshaw, president of JESS3, the deck triggered online conversations that led to in-person meetings with global ad agencies. 8. The Foundation for Personal Branding Brand marketers use SlideShare as a personal branding platform. The moment he uploaded the landmark You Suck at PowerPoint deck, Desjardins became a SlideShare heavyweight. While others live tweet or live blog events, Desjardins rewards his following with "live SlideSharing," a technique that's earned him a whopping 2.5 million views. Desjardins' popularity on the network ultimately led to his appointment as head of social media for Australia Tourism. |
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